The Deck of Omens

by Christine Lynn Herman

  “You’re late.” Augusta appeared in the Hawthorne house’s back doorway, her lips pursed into an annoyed grimace. Her mastiffs loped into position behind her a moment later. They were bigger than Harper remembered; on two legs, they would easily have been taller than she was. Another show of force. Another not-so-subtle reminder that while Harper had successfully stood up to Augusta and Juniper, neither of these women were pleased about it. “I said three thirty.”

  Harper pulled her phone out of her pocket. It was 3:31. Annoyance built in her throat, but she forced it down. She would not let Augusta rattle her—not visibly, anyway.

  “It won’t happen again,” she said smoothly.

  Augusta inclined her head in a sharp nod. “Good.” She wore black from head to toe, her hands ensconced in their usual leather gloves. A trench coat fell to her ankles, the tails flapping slightly in the breeze as she made her way across the lawn, her dogs trailing behind her. Harper had known Augusta Hawthorne her entire life, but that was not enough to overcome the sheer presence she exuded. Something about her demanded focus. Harper had thought for ages that it was a Hawthorne thing, but when she’d seen it in her siblings after they passed their rituals, she’d realized the truth.

  It was a founder thing. They all knew how to be watched—something Harper had yet to learn.

  “Before we begin,” Augusta said, locking eyes with her, “there are a few things we must cover. Firstly, I’m well aware you do not trust me. I do not expect you to, not yet. But I do require your respect. Can you do that?”

  Harper’s throat was tight, but she nodded. There was no world in which she would ever trust Augusta Hawthorne, but she’d always respected her. Even when she’d hated her.

  “Good.” Augusta’s voice was as chilly and brisk as a fall breeze. “Secondly, I want you to be aware of what we’re facing here. Four Paths is in a time of turmoil right now, and the town needs all of our strength to steady it after what happened with the Church of the Four Deities—we’re still feeling those aftershocks. Something strange occurred the night before you agreed to train with us, at the place where the Church attempted their ritual.”

  She drew out her phone and showed Harper a series of photos. Harper stared, frowning, at the iridescent liquid oozing through the lines of the founders’ symbol, the deep grooves in the dirt.

  The night before she’d agreed to train with them. That was the night Violet had been out late.

  “Do you know what that is?” she asked Augusta.

  Augusta shook her head. “Something new,” she said sharply. “Something dangerous. Which means there’s no more time to waste.”

  At first, Harper just exercised. Stretches, which Augusta modified for Harper’s residual limb; lunges, a quick jog around the yard. Harper was sweating and glad she’d worn workout clothes by the time they were done. After forty-five minutes of physical labor, Harper chugged most of a bottle of water, then sank to her knees beneath the tree she’d turned into a statue, panting. The branches above her head shone in the light of the setting sun.

  “Now that we’ve dealt with the basics”—Augusta’s boots appeared a foot away from Harper’s knees, crunching across the desiccated autumn leaves—“let’s discuss your powers.”

  Harper tipped up her head. Augusta’s face was impassive, but Harper wondered if her mind was full of the same memories Harper was now replaying. The night Harper had gripped her arm and tried to turn her to stone. The night she’d fallen into the lake. The night her life as she knew it had changed forever.

  “All right,” Harper said, starting to get to her feet, but to her surprise Augusta shook her head.

  “No, I’ll join you.” She lowered herself into the leaves, crossed her black leather boots, and placed her gloved hands primly on her knees. Harper wasn’t sure she’d ever actually been eye to eye with Augusta Hawthorne before. She’d expected the woman’s gaze to be even more piercing up close, but it was softer instead. The setting sun deepened the crow’s feet around her eyes, set her feathery blond pixie cut ablaze, and it occurred to Harper that this woman had watched this town crumble in her grasp, that she held the very weight of the forest itself on her shoulders.

  “What happens when you turn something to stone?” Augusta said mildly. “Describe your technique.”

  Harper hesitated. “It’s like… I push,” she said, extending her palm. “And it sort of flows from there.”

  “Localized in the hand, naturally,” Augusta said, her brow furrowing. “Sounds as if the power comes when you call, so what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know when to stop.” The words tumbled out of her, shameful and soft. Harper had always thought she’d excel as a founder if only she had powers, that the meticulous control she’d put into her weapons training would be easily applicable. She’d even judged Isaac for his inability to keep his powers in check. But now she was out of control, just like him.

  Maybe she would have learned if Augusta had given her a chance instead of cutting her off. Maybe fewer people would have died in the Gray. The knowledge of how unfair it was surged through Harper’s chest, and she knew that Violet would have let it take her over, stood up and stormed out.

  But Harper wasn’t Violet. She knew Augusta had wronged her—and she knew, just as well, that she could not change the Hawthornes’ betrayal. But it didn’t mean there was nothing to learn from the sheriff. So again she stayed silent, and to her surprise, Augusta’s face creased not with derision, but sympathy.

  “I had the same problem when I first came into my powers,” she said, almost gently.

  “Really?” Harper asked, surprised.

  “It is extremely unpleasant,” Augusta continued, rather stiffly, as if the very words made her uncomfortable, “to feel as if you are merely a vessel instead of the one in control.”

  Harper’s surprise deepened. She hated being used. She’d hated it when her father had done it, when Augusta and Juniper had tried to do it. But most of all, she hated that the power she had waited her entire life to have felt like it was just using her, too.

  “Yes,” she said, trying not to show how much it meant to her that someone else felt that way, too. “It is. So how do I stop it?”

  “Well, the difficult thing is that you are a vessel. All of us are. That is what our rituals do—they make us proper receptacles for power. Which means you must learn how to tame it before it tames you. You’re good with a sword, yes?”

  Harper nodded. “Very good, thank you.”

  Augusta’s lips twitched. If Harper hadn’t known better, she’d have said the older woman was amused.

  “Think of your power as a blade, then. One you must wield internally. Hone it in your mind. Call upon it with clear intention. Set boundaries, and do not allow it to surpass them.”

  This all made sense to Harper—too much sense, almost. It seemed so simple.

  “I see,” she said slowly, and then: “I want to try it.”

  “I thought you might.” She gestured to the leaves scattered on the ground. “Perhaps you can begin with one of them. Turn something small to stone. See if you can stop.”

  Harper’s heart thudded in her chest as she lifted a browning leaf into the air. She twirled it in her fingers, thinking of Augusta’s words—Call upon it with clear intention—and pictured the leaf transforming to stone, just that leaf, nothing else. Then she pushed her power into it, exhaling. Immediately, stone spread from the tips of her fingers, rushing up the leaf’s stem and engulfing it in reddish-brown.

  “There,” she said, setting the thin piece of stone down gently on the grass.

  Augusta gave her a sharp, approving nod.

  Harper was about to smile when she felt something course through her again, another wave of power. She slammed her palm against the ground and shuddered as a wave of stone rippled out from between her fingers, this one spreading across the ground. Augusta scrambled hastily out of the way as it rushed toward her.

  When
the surge of power faded, Harper was left staring at a swathe of stone leaves and grass before her, extending perhaps five feet outward from where her hand had struck the ground. She felt dizzy and disoriented again. Her residual limb ached as her frustration deepened, phantom pain twinging through a left hand that no longer existed.

  It hadn’t worked. Of course it hadn’t worked. Harper hated that she was disappointed. She rose cautiously to her feet, the world still spinning, and braced herself for whatever insult Augusta Hawthorne was about to hurl her way.

  But instead, Augusta was staring at the damage Harper had done, an unreadable expression on her face.

  “Hmm,” she said. “Perhaps asking you to work on this here was unwise. We’ll try your lake next time.”

  “My lake?” Harper asked, trying not to sound dubious. “It doesn’t belong to me.”

  “Yes, it does.” Augusta gestured to the tree behind her. “The founders’ rituals might be different, but they are all based around specific places. The Saunderses’ attic. Your lake. Our tree. The Sullivans’…” She trailed off, shook her head. “The point is, place matters in Four Paths. It puts you in tune with the bargain you made and enables you to focus. Why do you think we hold the Founders’ Day ceremony on the seal?”

  “I’ve never really thought about it,” Harper said honestly.

  “Because that’s where the founders sacrificed themselves for the Beast,” Augusta said. “It is an important place for us all.”

  Harper had never known that. There was a lot she didn’t know, she realized, guilt rising in her. Maybe the Hawthornes had deserved to have their focal point taken away, but she wasn’t sure the town deserved to lose so many of its defenses. Before she had her powers, she had seen the stark reality of what it was like to live in Four Paths, to put your safety in other people’s hands.

  Revenge on Justin’s family had seemed so simple. But Harper knew she could not just consider her own feelings about the Hawthornes anymore. She held the power she had always craved in her small palm; she could not justify misusing it. That would make her no better than her father. No better than Augusta.

  “What would happen,” she asked quietly, “if all of those places were destroyed?”

  Augusta froze. Her gloved hands twitched ever so slightly as she stared at the pile of stone leaves Harper had created.

  “I don’t think any of us would like to find out,” she said finally. “That’s why it’s so important that you gain control of your powers. And when you do gain control, I hope for all of our sakes that you use your power wisely.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  May stared grimly at the leaf in her gloved hand, then held it up to the sunlight, squinting. The foliage around her blazed orange and crimson, a perfect Saturday morning in the heart of autumn, but May knew all that was a lie. Beneath their bark, any of these trees could be succumbing to the same disease that she had seen a few weeks ago in the forest, rotting them from the inside out.

  “You see it,” she said, turning to her father. “Don’t you?”

  Ezra nodded grimly as May’s stomach churned. The sunlight illuminated the exact places where the oak leaf’s natural rusty orange faded into splotchy gray, the oily sheen of its veins. Liquid dripped from the stem, gray and viscous, but May’s gloves shielded it from direct contact with her skin. It didn’t shield the smell from her nose, though.

  They were standing in the clearing where the Church of the Four Deities had done their ritual. After their meeting outside of town, May had been able to use her extensive knowledge of Augusta’s schedule to successfully smuggle her father into Four Paths.

  She was glad she had—now she wasn’t the only witness to this slow-motion train wreck.

  Iridescent veins spiderwebbed across the tree in front of her, gray bleeding out from them in patches. The layer of bark between the veins had thinned, glimmering with a fleshy sheen. May could see more veins sliding beneath it, moving toward the heart of the tree. She’d touched the bark with her glove and been disturbed by the way it felt—even through the thin fabric, it was soft and warm, almost like human skin.

  “These are the same symptoms I saw in the forest,” she said, releasing the leaf and letting it flutter to the ground. “And they’re getting worse.”

  Beside her, Ezra studied the tree, his mouth set in a thin, worried line, and pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. He’d been antsy since she escorted him back into town. She didn’t blame him. If Augusta figured out he was here before May could prove she’d called him back for a good reason, she shuddered to think what would happen to both of them.

  “You saw fog emanating from the tree before, correct?” he asked, turning toward her.

  She nodded. “It looked like an opening, sort of. To the Gray. But I don’t see anything like that now.”

  “Interesting.” Ezra walked around the tree, studying it carefully. “There are usually only two possibilities for the Gray opening: the Beast is nearby, or a Sullivan has opened a portal. These symptoms, however, are different. Finding their source requires a return to the beginning of everything—to the founders themselves.”

  May’s eyes widened. “You’ve heard of this before?”

  “Maybe.” Ezra’s brow furrowed. “There’s very little information about what Four Paths was like before the founders locked the Beast in the Gray. But when it roamed wild, it supposedly caused havoc much like this.”

  He pulled out a tablet from inside his jacket pocket and swiped through it. “After our conversation, I dug back into my research archives on this town,” he said, handing the screen to May. “This appears to line up with what we’re experiencing here.”

  May stared at the screen, her mouth agape. It was a scan of a drawing, meticulously detailed and sharply rendered—a tree with the center of the trunk carved out, liquid dripping from the edges of the hole. Veins just like the ones in front of them curved around the bark.

  She knew that art style, even though it was ink, not paint. She would have known it anywhere.

  “Hetty Hawthorne drew this.” It wasn’t a question.

  Ezra nodded grimly. “It depicts a sort of plague that the uncaged Beast appeared to unleash in its wake.”

  May’s stomach lurched. “It isn’t free, though. It can’t be free.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Ezra said quickly. “Things would be quite different if it was. But from what you’ve told me, Four Paths’ condition has declined significantly since I left town. The line between the Gray and our reality has grown thin. Four Paths may be heading toward a breaking point.”

  “A breaking point?” May asked. “You mean like the Beast escaping?”

  “Maybe. This rotting tree is just the beginning of what the original founders faced at the hands of the Beast. If it does escape, this corruption will eat this town whole. If we’re lucky, it’ll stop at Four Paths—but if we’re not, it’ll spread farther.”

  “We have to stop this,” she whispered, shoving the tablet back into her father’s hands. “How can we stop this?”

  Ezra tucked it into his coat once more. He was calmer than she could comprehend—but then, this was not his town. He was here because she’d asked him to be. She was here because she had no other choice.

  “Do you remember when you were younger?” Ezra asked. “That ritual you did?”

  The forest seemed to blur suddenly around May, the colors and the iridescence bleeding together, and she realized those were tears.

  It had been real. Those memories—he knew it had happened, too. He knew.

  Her voice, when she spoke, no longer sounded like it belonged to her. “Yes.”

  The first time he’d cut her palms and asked her to give her blood to the tree, May threw up afterward. The second time, she cried. But the third time, she walked away feeling unbreakable.

  The lines on her palms had long since faded away, but the memories hadn’t, nor had that strange, persistent itch on her hands. And when the hawth
orn tree did not bow to Justin all those years later, she wondered in the back of her mind if it was because it knew her blood instead of his.

  “I always told you that ritual would be important someday.” Ezra’s face was solemn.

  May swallowed, her palms itching, the forest still dangerously woozy. “What did you do to me?”

  “The Gray has been threatening to overpower the founders for a long time, May.” His voice was gentle. “I knew that if we wanted to have any chance of fighting the Beast, really fighting it, the founders needed to be stronger. I read about the original ritual the founders did for power. I thought it might tip the balance if a founder did it again, but Augusta refused. Said it was too risky.”

  “But you did it anyway.”

  He nodded. “Because you asked me to.”

  May’s heart was beating so fast, it hurt. She wobbled, then swayed, her father’s hand steadying her and guiding her to a seat on the forest floor. It was true that she’d asked. She’d talked to him about her ritual—about how scared she was of failing it. About how she knew Justin would do well, but she wanted to prove herself, too.

  What if we could guarantee that you would pass it? he’d asked her. And she’d jumped at that chance.

  It was why she could not hate her father. Because he had given her the power she had always wanted. Because he had seen in her the things Augusta couldn’t, or wouldn’t. Because he’d been right.

  “The ritual worked,” she murmured, thinking of all her futures laid out before her, of grabbing the one she wanted and yanking it into place. “I’m stronger than I should be.”

  Ezra knelt beside her, and there was that smile again, big and wide and proud.

  “That’s not true,” he said. “You’re as strong as you deserve to be.”

  Gratitude surged through her. She grinned and turned to thank him—and saw, from her new vantage point, a pair of sneakers twitching behind the nearest tree.

  “Dad,” she whispered, extending a shaking finger.